Perhaps you've heard this term, Mother Culture, as you've knocked around Charlotte Mason groups and conversations – but what does it mean?
The term originated with this 1892 Parents' Review article, which is the obvious place to start answering that question.
A money quote:
Then it is [after many years of pouring herself out in childrearing] that, in her efforts to be ideal wife, mother, and mistress, she forgets that she is herself. Then it is, in fact, that she stops growing.
One way to understand "Mother Culture" is to understand what it's meant to counteract: a woman's intellectual and spiritual stagnation, which result from a lifetime of taking care of everyone else, including providing their education, without consideration of her own mind and soul's need for sustenance.
When we think about our needs this way, we can see clearly that – as we are, in fact, human beings made in the Image of God, body, mind, and soul, just as our children are – we're talking about something more than a haircut or a mani-pedi to fulfill our real and valid needs. We're talking about something above and beyond the level of basic self-care, though certainly if you're in a situation where you're not able to maintain a personal hygiene and grooming routine, then you might legitimately need to work on that before you move to something else.
Also, yes, it's nice to treat ourselves and be pampered now and again: dinner out, a spa day, a haircut, whatever makes you feel cared for and freed from your normal duty rounds. But Mother Culture is something else again. It's about addressing the fact that like our children, we are born persons. Our mind, like our children's is a spiritual organism. Without the good food of ideas, presented specifically via living books, that organism is bound to atrophy and, as the PR article says, stop growing.
Mother Culture, then, is self-education that keeps you connected with who you are as a born person, so that you do keep growing and learning, feeding your hungry mind that wants ideas, so that it doesn't atrophy from intellectual self-neglect. As one of my confessors used to say, "You can't give what you don't have," and as your children's educator, in addition to being happier and more alive yourself, you will also have more to give to them.
And believe me, your mind IS hungry and you DO have intellectual needs (and potential for huge growth), even if you hated school and don't think of yourself as a smart or intellectual person. Now is your chance to start to spread a feast for YOU, with courses of various levels of spiciness.
Here's another money quote:
The wisest woman I ever knew--the best wife, the best mother, the best mistress, the best friend--told me once, when I asked her how, with her weak health and many calls upon her time, she managed to read so much, "I always keep three books going--a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel, and I always take up the one I feel fit for!" That is the secret; always have something "going" to grow by. If we mothers were all "growing" there would be less going astray among our boys, less separation in mind from our girls.
This sort of schedule of reading can and should include spiritual reading, of course, but we should resist the temptation to think that that's all we need. One box we can put ourselves in as Catholic mothers is that of thinking that our soul's needs are ONLY for those things expressly marked "spiritual."
I hope that we are reminded, in presenting a Charlotte Mason education to our children, that history (the human story) is also spiritual, and biology, and poetry and fiction, and everything else in creation, that reflects God's goodness in its own excellence. If all you are making time for is spiritual reading – well, by all means don't stop, but add something else, too, in some other category. Connect with things you're interested in – or things that have been outside your purview, but that you might find that you ARE interested in. There's nothing in creation that's not potentially interesting, if you can find the right book to engage with.
Some things I've been reading recently that would count as "stiff books," "moderately easy books," and novels (note the presence of affiliate links):
Stiff Books
On Prayer and the Contemplative Life, Thomas Aquinas
How to Read a Novel, Caroline Gordon
Painting the Novel: The Fine Art of Fiction in Henry James' Prefaces, Henry James
Moderately Easy Books
The Voices of Morebath, Eamon Duffy
The Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon
The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity, Paul Mariani
Novels (read really fast)
The Barsetshire Chronicles, Anthony Trollope
The Palliser Novels, Anthony Trollope
The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
Miss McKenzie, Anthony Trollope
Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather
The Professor's House, Willa Cather
After This, Alice McDermott
The novels I read fast, end to end, usually in the ten or twenty or thirty minutes before I fall asleep in bed at night. The other books I pick up and put down a lot more. Note that I have far fewer "stiff books" on my list, because it takes me a lot longer to read them. I read them in tiny bites, and sometimes a long time elapses between my readings. But I peck away at them, and eventually I either finish or I don't.
Audiobooks are a good option if you don't have a lot of time to sit down and read. There's no law that says that all your time in the car with kids has to be spent listening to their books. Sometimes it can be yours. Sometimes your book is interesting to everyone – we listened to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything on a long car trip once, because I was interested in it. Other people got caught up in it, too.
The main thing, though, is to feed your mind. Recognize that you have one, recognize that it's hungry, recognize what it's hungry for – "the meat of ideas," as Charlotte Mason says – and affirm to yourself that you too deserve and need that nourishment, just as your children do. You will feel happier and more alive if you do, and you'll be better at meeting the demands of your vocation.
Incidentally, I have curated a number of booklists in my Bookshop storefront. Please feel free to visit, scroll down, and browse any section that appeals to you. While I have long lists of children's books and homeschooling resources, I also have fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other lists that might offer some satiation to your own hungry mind. If you search through my storefront, too, I will receive affiliate credit for any book you buy, so if you don't see what you want right away, please feel free to search. As always, we thank you for your support.
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